Secure Information Exchange - A Security Quantification Approach

Quantification of security offers tremendous potential in improving the understanding, specification, and management of the security of a system. We propose a novel systematic approach to quantify security of a system based on the analysis of inter-dependence of security attributes and the impact of security guidelines and policies on system security. This paper presents proof of concept and initial investigations into the quantification of secure information exchange used as a safeguard over insecure public networks. A case study is presented to model and validate appropriate key sizes for crypto-ciphers used in a secure session based on the inter-relationship between asymmetric and symmetric key ciphers and the impact of key and session refreshes